


Taming the Beast

by CatLovePower



Category: Lethal Weapon (Movies), Lethal Weapon (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Non-Consensual Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 23:09:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8179270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatLovePower/pseuds/CatLovePower
Summary: Riggs annoys the wrong persons and things take a turn for the worse. Shameless H/C for the TV series.





	

Martin Riggs was sprawled like a cat in the sun, precariously balanced in a revolving chair, his feet propped up on a colleague's paperwork. 

Hearing him snore should have been a relief but that only meant more energy for shenanigans later. Riggs was like a hurricane, unrelenting and destructive, even though that was never totally intentional. And there was no weather forecast for that type of storm.

Everyone in the station was wary around him, as if he was broken or dangerous. And they were mostly right, because “dangerously broken” was about accurate. 

His breathing hitched and he made a garbled sound, as if he was talking in his sleep. Murtaugh decided to prevent him from waking up screaming when the dream turned nightmare. He considered smacking his partner upside the head, but hesitated a second, looking at his greasy crazy hair, before pushing Riggs' boots from the desk. He was in a good mood, so he held on to the chair.

Riggs sputtered, the hair flailed everywhere. He opened very bleary eyes, and the captain chose that moment to summon them to his office. 

"You know what I really don't like...?" he asked, and because they both loved their boss' rhetorical questions, they started firing inane answers.

"Dance competitions on TV?"

“Spiders?”

"Pineapple on a pizza?"

"Bad hair days?" That one was from Riggs, and Murtaugh raised an eyebrow and threw him a quick look.

"... On a Monday morning?" their boss finished with such a sigh that Murtaugh stopped smiling.

"Someone finished the coffee pot and didn't replace it?"

"Having to read formal complaints, on a Monday morning, that’s what I don't like." 

"Sir?" 

"Some officers didn't really enjoy last week's..."

"Incident?" Riggs provided with a grin. He was slouched in his chair, making a fool of himself as usual. More than usual, even. 

"Lieutenant Daniels lost his eyebrows and some of his hair."

"His very receding hair," Riggs added, jabbing a finger in the air.

"In Riggs' defense, Daniels shouldn't have tried to..."

It had involved a lighter, a .33 bullet and a newspaper. The flame had been quite impressive.

"Oh don't worry, detective, you are also cited in the complaints, plural."

"What? I never..." Murtaugh sputtered, mostly for show.

"So you were not collecting bets money..."

"Sir, I would never condone such..."

"... In your hat?" 

They had to listen to a pretty angry lecture about gambling, the proper use of firearms and security in the office. Riggs was obviously struggling, but he couldn’t sit straight or pretend he was even remotely interested in the matter.

That man probably didn’t fare well in high school, Murtaugh mused, throwing him sideway glances from time to time. He was slipping. Actually slipping in his chair, as if he was going to fall down and continue his nap right there on the boss’ carpet.

It must have shown, because after half an hour of hands thrown in the air and empty promises on their part, they were free to go and “destroy the city, or whatever, but please do it quietly for once.”

“You okay?” Murtaugh asked, with something akin to concern in his voice. He put a hand on Riggs’ tattered jacket and helped him along the corridor.

“What’s up with you this morning? Rough night? Wait, no, don’t answer, I’d rather not know what you were up to this time…” He realized he was holding both sides of the conversation, and Riggs had phased out a while back.

“Can you…” With a nervous flick of the wrist, the younger man pushed back the hair that had fallen on his sweaty brow. He seemed to forget he had begun a sentence.

“What?”

“Can you stop speaking so fast? It's exhausting.”

“Yeah, right… What's wrong with you?” Murtaugh continued, but mostly talking to himself now.

“I have an appointment. I need to take a leak.” Riggs shrugged to get rid of his hand on his arm, and Murtaugh raised both hands, letting him stagger towards the restroom.

In Riggs talk, it meant drinking in a toilet stall, before not talking to a department appointed psychiatrist for an hour. Or so he heard. 

So he went back to his own, un-trampled paperwork, because he still was an active police detective, and writing reports about their path of destruction was bound to give him a headache sooner or later anyway.

He tried to forget about his partner and the complaints, and he had nearly succeeded when he raised his head and saw the good doctor looking for Riggs across the room. That was a new one. From what Murtaugh understood, he despised psychiatrists and hated the idea of having to open up to someone, but he never stood the woman up. He wasn’t that big of an ass.

Murtaugh stood up and greeted the doctor, offering his help to track down her reluctant patient. She smiled that tight, timid smile of hers, and they started looking for Riggs.

They found him passed out in an unoccupied office, face down on the off white carpet, saliva dribbling from his mouth. Murtaugh would swear later that he hadn’t been scared at all, but the watch monitoring his heart told another story. He remembered standing awkwardly, everything beeping like crazy, while Dr Cahill was taking his partner’s pulse. 

“What’s wrong with him?” she whispered.

“You mean beside the usual?” Murtaugh couldn’t help asking.

She threw him a mean look, a hand on Riggs' carotid, looking at her wrist watch.

“He seemed off, earlier,” he added lamely. “Drunk. Or sick. You can’t really tell with him.”

“Did he hit his head?” the doctor asked, and Murtaugh shrugged, because how should he know. 

Riggs once came to work with a still bleeding knife wound, but didn’t tell anyone because “he had forgotten about it”. It started oozing through his shirt during a meeting, and everyone had freaked out. Maybe there was also a complaint about that. Too much bleeding in the workplace. 

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

He crouched next to his partner and his knees creaked. He was too old for this shit. He patted Riggs on the cheek, and pushed the twisted strands of hair from his face. The younger man smiled slightly but didn’t open his eyes.

“I think he’s just sleeping.” Dr Cahill finally said. She sat down and looked for her phone in her bag.

“Riggs, come on.” Murtaugh tapped him cheek again.

Riggs groaned and battered his hand away as if chasing a fly. He seemed uncoordinated. Groggy. 

“’m fine.”

“What did he say?” Cahill asked.

“Felt tired. Needed to lie down. Chair toppled.”

“Shouldn’t we call someone or…” Murtaugh felt bad leaving him on the floor like that; even though he looked like a bum half the time, he was still his partner. 

Then the door opened and Daniels entered the office with a smug look on his bandaged face. 

“What’s wrong with the human butt wipe?” he said, pushing Riggs’ thigh with his foot. Murtaugh growled without even realizing it. 

“Fuck you,” Riggs said to the carpet, but it was muffled and not quite heartfelt. 

If Daniels was a smart man, he wouldn’t have been caught. Riggs would have slept it off, and no one would have been the wiser. But Daniels was stupid, and he had even stupider friends. Who happened to enter the room after him and ask around, “Did it work?”

“What’s going on here?” Cahill asked. “What did you do?”

Explanations were stuttered, and the monitor on Murtaugh’s wrist was beeping once again, but it was rage, not fear, that made his heart race this time.

“You drugged a police officer?” he yelled.

“You gave Prozac to a depressed alcoholic?” Cahill growled. She could be scary when she wanted.

“Functioning alcoholic…” Riggs corrected from the carpet, his eyes still unfocussed.

“Allegedly,” Murtaugh said with a smile, because he couldn’t wait to see that hairless dickhead getting his ass handed to him by their captain. This was going to be glorious. As soon as Riggs stopped drooling on the floor.


End file.
